Using Mellon Foundation’s College and Beyond survey of alumni from 34 colleges and universities spanning 40 years, Clotfelter found that those who reported that someone "... besides students [took] a special interest in you or your workʺ also reported greater general satisfaction with their...

This paper was prepared as a chapter for College Decisions: How Students Actually Make Them and How They Could, edited by Caroline Hoxby for publication by the University of Chicago Press for the NBER. In this chapter, we describe the potential significance of student peer effects for the...

The market for undergraduate education has many similarities to an arms race. A school's position - relative to other schools - determines its success in attracting students and student quality. Its position, in turn, is largely determined by the size of its student subsidies, the difference...

This brief paper asks if the proposition that "growth is goodʺ applies with equal force to private business and to private colleges and universities. An increasing appreciation of the fundamental differences in economic structure between business firms and academic institutions suggests that...

College tuition, as the price of higher education services, defies familiar economic analysis in important ways. It is recognized that tuition is a price that covers only a fraction of the cost of producing those educational services (about a third, nationally), creating an in-kind subsidy for...